Lee, owner of the Winchester bar and restaurant, and the What The Truck food truck, is busy getting approvals this fall for a new venture on Wealthy Street, which he hopes to open by May 2013.

The new place, a concept he’s holding close some details on, will be located at 665 Wealthy Street SE in a long-vacant auto service station currently used as staff and customer parking for the popular Winchester across the street.

“Our hope is with having another place, that development will help infill some of the other buildings around here that are sitting vacant,” said Lee.

Lee is seeking a zoning variance this week for approval to construct an 1,800 square-foot addition to the current service station building, which has been shuttered for about 10 years. Lee’s family bought the former gas station property in 2010.

The addition will be constructed in a way that makes it fit naturally into the Cherry Hill Historic District neighborhood where the property sits, he said. The city’s Historic Preservation Commission will have to sign off on plans later this fall.

If everything goes properly, he’d like to break ground in December.

Lee told city planners the new restaurant would be a taqueria bar, or taco shop with 129 seats; about 80 inside and the rest outside. The existing building would house a dining area, and the new building would house the bar, entry, restrooms, kitchen and back office operations.

“It’s something that’s unique to this side of the river, really," he said.

He plans to seek a full liquor license, but like the nearby Winchester, the full bar would be very food-oriented. Plans hours call for closing at midnight each day, with a 7 a.m. opening Sunday, Saturday and possibly Friday for brunch.

The taqueria bar would complement Lee’s food truck, which was highly visible thus summer at Blues on the Mall concerts, and this fall set up outside the Grand Rapids Art Museum for ArtPrize, next to Molly Clauhs’ Silver Spork Food Truck.

Lee sources ingredients for the truck and the Winchester from a nearby urban garden. The taquiera would occupy the corner of Wealthy and Henry Street, bounded by Donovan Court, and alley-like street to the north.

The project is not going to be “just some new windows and repaint the outside,” he said. “It’s important to make sure when we develop this, we do it the right way.”

“It’s a pretty sizeable investment.”

He hopes the new venture ultimately helps to continue building the Wealthy Street corridor into a destination in the way the nearby Cherry-Diamond Business District has become a go-to, walkable block anchored by restaurants like Brewery Vivant, The Green Well, Grove and the new Maru Sushi.

To the east of the Winchester, once-vacant buildings have filled up with new businesses like the Wealthy Street Bakery, Art of the Table, Rowster’s New American Coffee, Jonny B’z Dogs and More, and the Nourish Organic Market.

But to the west, there are still remnants of Wealthy Street’s former boarded-up past, including the Wild Bunch motorcycle gang building, one of several vacant-looking buildings still remaining on the Cherry Hill blocks.

A brewery project next to the Wild Bunch building, the Elk Brewing Co., may have ran into some “financing roadblocks,” said Lee.

“You have a lot of young people that live around here; young professionals and students, or those living in single-family homes,” he said. The hope is to keep building toward a critical mass of businesses that cater to a diverse set of demographic interests. A new taqueria bar is another step in that process.

“We really want to kind of bring back this area that was once a traditional business district, make it walkable, livable and a place where people will stop and shop.”